


Tam Lin

by NEStar



Category: Sanditon (TV 2019), Sanditon - Jane Austen, Tam Lin (Traditional Ballad)
Genre: 6 Sanditon Valentines, F/M, Forbidden Love, Tumblr: Sanditon Creative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22644073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NEStar/pseuds/NEStar
Summary: For over a hundred years tales have been told that the grounds of Parker Hall is haunted by the ghost of Sidney Parker, a young man who disappeared while hunting.Charlotte found out early in her visit that it's not a ghost but a man cursed by the Fairy Queen.
Relationships: Charlotte Heywood/Sidney Parker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48





	Tam Lin

**Author's Note:**

> I was influenced by this version of the Tam Lin story - https://youtu.be/42a81CwFM70  
> It's a great song, so check it out!

Charlotte felt her head spin, the last half hour had been one new experience after another: the view of the sea, the bustle of the building in the town, the quick introduction to the children, and now the grandeur of Trafalgar House. She stopped in the entry hall, taking a moment to just be calm, when her attention was caught once again. 

A large painting was the focal point of the hall. It showed a rather handsome young man in old fashioned clothing that suggested it was some ancestor, yet there was no wig or flounce that Charlotte had come to expect from that time. Instead the picture showed a close crop of thick dark hair, a pair of striking eyes that seemed to look back at her, and lower down was a long pale neck that was shown off by an open collar.

“Ah, Sidney Parker catches the fancy of another young lady.”

Charlotte blushed at Tom’s words, “No... I was just…”

Tom waved away her stammering, “Ignore my teasing, my dear. There’s a long story attached to him - a distant cousin - that has turned into a bit of a local fabal.” Tom led her into a drawing room where Mary and the children had settled down and a maid was just setting out tea.

“I thought you might have changed your mind,” Mary said with a smile.

“Another young lady caught by Sidney Parker,” Tom said in a dramatic tone.

Mary chuckled, “Have you told her the story yet?”

Tom looked around at the children, making himself look hunched and menacing, “Shall I tell the story?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“It started over one hundred years ago. Sidney Parker was born a younger grandson of the Lord of Parker Hall. By all accounts he was a very smart young man, well educated and given to writing poetry, but still active out of doors 

It was late summer, the year he was twenty, when he had joined his grandfather’s hunt. It started off well, he had shot three pheasants that morning, but right as the sun hit its zenith the hart was spotted. The party took off, spreading out to cut off the means of escape. In that confusion, Sidney disappeared.

His horse was found right away but though the whole household searched for days no trace of the man was found.”

The children gave a gasp and shivered and Charlotte felt an urge to join them.

“His grandfather was so grieved that he moved the family away to one of their other estates.

It was some years later that the first whisperings began. A young lady had gone onto the grounds foraging for some herbs and she said he was walking there, still as handsome and lively as he had ever been. Every few years another young lady would tell the same tale - and always ladies, no gentlemen has ever spotted him.”

At this Charlotte did shiver.

“So there it is, the story of the charming Sidney Parker who hunts the grounds of Parker Hall.”

* * *

Charlotte had kept so busy in her first weeks in Sanditon that she had quite forgotten the story Tom had told on her arrival. So it was a shock when she went exploring along the river one day, following the blue bells, and ran straight into a man who was the very image of the painting of Sidney Parker.

“And what brings such a lovely young woman to the grounds of my house?” he asked.

Charlotte gasped and turned, starting to run away but she was quickly blocked - as if she had run into an invisible wall. She turned and tried to run a different way, only to be met with the same block. 

“You should know better then to step into a fairy ring.”

“Wait… how do I get out?” She spun to face him, “You can’t just trap me here!”

“All magic has a price,” he said smoothly. “Any maiden who wishes to leave must first show me her pleasure.” 

* * *

This was the moment that made his heart race. Vague words, left up to the listener to interpret.

She licked her lips and straightened her back, "Why should I agree to such an outrageous statement?"

Oh, how her eyes sparkled!

"I don't even know you," she said.

He took her hand and bowed over it, "Tam Lin, at your service, my lady."

He caught her eyes as he straightened up, holding the gaze until she blushed and looked down. 

"Charlotte Heywood," she said softly.

A frisson of shock ran through his body. Her true name, she had given him her true name! Didn't she know what kind of power that held? Why, only the Fairy Queen knew his true name. He couldn't even recall it.

He stepped closer, until there were only inches between them. “Charlotte,” he said, more of a breath than a word.

“Yes,” she whispered and then her lips touched his.

* * *

It was wicked.

Both the act itself and the means by which it happened (really, a man made immortal by fairy magic and called into this world when a girl stepped into a patch of flowers?), but Charlotte didn’t care.

It was wonderful.

The sensations and feelings he brought forth in her… was it truly any wonder that she had found herself back on the grounds of Parker Hall three more times?

She paused at the bottom of the stairs to steal a quick glance at the painting before heading on to breakfast.

“Ah, perfect timing!” Mary said. “The post has just arrived and there’s a letter for you.”

Charlotte read as she ate, sharing out loud some of the stories of her younger siblings adventures. 

“And Henry has grown two inches - No, That can not be! I have not been here long enough for that.”

Mary laughed, “Indeed, it has been two months already.”

Two months. The words struck her, stealing her breath away.

“Charlotte?” Mary questioned.

“No, just… How the time flies,” she answered.

She had been visiting Sanditon for two months, but her courses had not.

* * *

He lay in his bower, one arm draped over the edge with a glass of wine dangling from it.

Bits and fragments of thoughts raced through his mind. Faces, images, memories? Things that left him unsettled, things he had never thought to consider before... 

He had liaisons with maidens before - That was a task set to him by the Queen - but none had ever come back a second time.

None had ever said a name.

The clear memory of that flooded over him. Charlotte with her head thrown back, twice in the patch of blue bells, once against a tree, and finally as she moved a top of him. Each time she reached the peak of her pleasure her voice would catch and a name came sobbing out, “Sidney!”. Then as she lay panting after, encouraging him, that name again. Whispered into his ear, a praise to spur him on, “Sidney, yes.”

“Sidney,” he mouthed. Not daring to give sound to it. In that name there were foggy memories: images of laughing friends, of an older man (grandfather?), of Parker Hall full of people.

A scent of Autumn came to him - leaf mold and mushrooms, damp grass and frost - giving him a chance to right himself before she appeared.

“Tam Lin! My favorite knight!”

The Fairy Queen was striking in her beauty. Pale skin set off by the deep red leaves that made her dress, golden hair bound up with the stems of mushrooms. A stately neck set off by the sparkle of frost on her ear lobes.

“You’ve been hiding from me,” she said with a pout.

“Never, my queen. Just busy with my duties.”

She raised an eyebrow, “And spending much more time in the mortal realm of late.”

“Only as the obligations you gave me dictate,” he replied coolly.

She looked him over for a long moment, studying him, before saying, “It’s never wise to grow too fond of a human pet.”

After she left all he could wonder was if she had been warning him... or herself?

* * *

It had taken a week of discreet questions but she finally had her answer - and it made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. Of course the only place that those herbs grew were on the grounds of Parker Hall.

She took a deep breath, stealing her resolve, and then took the step that brought her on to the grounds. She quickly made her way over to the side where the kitchen had been. The fisher's midwife told her the location, reassuring her that she wasn’t the first girl who had made this quest.

Charlotte found the rue and had her basket half full when the air changed. She turned to face him.

“I thought you said that you wouldn’t --” He fell silent when he saw her basket. “Those aren’t blue bells.”

“No, they’re not.

“Is that the way of it, Charlotte?”

She nodded.

“For sure?”

“Two months.”

He was silent for a long moment, so Charlotte went back to filling her basket.

“There’s no… Did you tell your family or just decide this on your own?”

She looked up at him, “I’m away from my family, if all goes well they will never know.”

He fell silent again.

If pushed, she would say he looked stricken.

“Sidney?”

He looked up sharply, “Why do you call me that? Why does it bring up visions in my mind?”

“I saw your picture,” she said simply, “Even before our first meeting I was under the spell of Sidney Parker.”

* * *

“Sidney Parker,” he repeated, feeling a piece of himself fall back into place. “I had forgotten it.”

“How do you forget your own name?” She seemed confused.

“Names have power,” he answered. “When the Fairy Queen took me she called me Tam Lin. She was the only one who knew my true name until you.”

Charlotte thought about that for a moment. “I told you my name. Is that why...”

“No!” he said quickly. “No. There is... I'm under an obligation to this place. Its guardian to keep this land for Queen Eliza. If I were to fail then some other Fay could make a claim on it.”

“So you have to seduce young ladies or your Queen would lose power?”

He couldn't let her think that, “The wording of my obligation is 'a maiden may not leave until she shows me her pleasure'. The younger ones, that are still truly innocent, show me the flowers that they've just picked and that's enough to set them free. The older ones, they put their own meaning into the words.”

Charlotte looked at the basket, “There's no pleasure in these flowers.”

“Even a pleasant thought will do,” he said.

She stepped closer and brought a hand up to cup his cheek, “I would love to have a child with your eyes.”

Sidney felt a lightness in his soul. “I might know of a way.”

Charlotte looked at him expectantly.

“The Queen, every seven years on Midsummer Night she pays a tithe to hell to keep her powers. She is an Autumn queen, growing strong when things begin to die.” He took a deep breath, “She's said a few things, made some comments... I think this year she might have chosen to sacrifice me.”

“What can we do?”

The lightness grew, filling every part of his being. She had said, “we,'' as if they were already inseparable.

“You'll have to be brave. So very brave.”

Her back straightened and her chin lifted, “Whatever is needed.”

* * *

Charlotte shivered and drew the dark green cloak tighter around herself. Behind her she could hear the sound of the Abbey bells ringing out the three quarters hour and she ran over the instructions Sidney had given her once more.

The sound of hooves came up the road. Charlotte took a deep breath and waited.

A line of four dark steeds went past her before she caught a glimpse of a milk white horse, Sidney’s.

Moving slowly to match pace with the caravan, Charlotte saw that Sidney had worked his foot out of the sturup and had let go of the reigns, leading the horse with just his knees. Taking her chance, she darted forward and grabbed his arm. Before he was even fully off the saddle, Charlotte heard an outraged scream. Suddenly the weight in her arms disappeared. It was no longer a man she held but a snake wrapped around her arm. She quickly grabbed the creature right behind its head so it couldn’t bite her, then took off running as fast as she could.

She had gone a fair way before the beast changed again, the snake’s head in her hand shifting into the talon of a hawk. Wings were beating at her face and a sharp beak bit at one of her fingers, but she managed to pull her cloak over the bird and cause it to calm. 

The calm did not last long. Thankfully this transformation took longer, giving Charlotte a chance to prepare. She could feel feathers shifting to fur, the talon she held thickening into paw. She was able to shift her hold to the beast’s neck and secure herself on its back before the bear stood on to its hind legs and roared. It swatted at her, the claws making contact with her leg and she let out a loud sob. At this the beast dropped back down onto all fours and started to run. Mercifully, it was running the right way - toward the Abbey - and Charlotte could just see the gate when the next change happened.

The bear stopped running and began to shrink in on itself. The fur smoothed away and the limbs melted into the body, which then turned into a large bar of iron. The weight of it was staggering but nothing that Charlotte couldn’t handle. She stood up and began to limp towards the Abbey gate.

With each step the iron got warmer and warmer, by the time she made it through the gate the metal was starting to glow. As she took the last steps towards the well, Charlotte could feel her dress scorch away and the flesh of her arms start to blister and burn. With a pain filled cry she tossed the now red hot iron bar into the well.

A giant plume of steam rolled out of the well, shrouding the whole courtyard in mist. Charlotte couldn’t see anything but she could hear an angry voice yelling.

“I would rip out those eyes that have seen my land!”

The mist cleared and Charlotte could see a woman on horseback at the gate. Beautiful, golden, and cold.

“ I want the life of the wretch that took my knight!”

“You have no power here,” a voice called out and Charlotte swung around to see a man standing in the door to the Abbey. “This is holy ground. Be gone, fiend of Hell.”

The Queen let out an enraged yell, then swung her horse around and was gone.

A sputter suddenly reminded Charlotte of the whole purpose of the evening. Rushing to the well she found Sidney climbing out. It took both her and the priest to pull him out but then… there he was. Naked and dripping wet but smiling, “Miss Heywood.” He bowed his head to her and Charlotte felt herself blush.

She quickly whipped off her cloak and wrapped it around him, sneaking a quick kiss as she did so.

“Come children,” the Priest’s voice reminded her that there was a great world away from Sidney’s lips. “You both need tending to, and I think you have quite a story to tell me.”


End file.
